Weather

In a recent survey of more than 3,000 people conducted by TripAdvisor, 89 percent of respondents said their vacation plans have not been affected by the early predictions of another active hurricane season. Fifty-eight percent said they plan to visit a hurricane-susceptible destination such as Cancún.

Still, last year’s rash of storms did make an impression: sixty-three percent said they would purchase travel insurance.

So as we look ahead to the really big tropical months coming up – August and September – let’s hope that the Atlantic remains as quiet as it has during June and July. But something tells me it won’t.

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In brief…

April 7th - Never again will there be a Hurricane Wilma – nor Katrina, Dennis, Rita nor Stan.

The five hurricane names from last year’s devastating storms have now been officially "retired" by the ‘hurricane committee’ of the World Meteorological Organisation, and will not reappear on the list of potential storm names that is otherwise recycled every six years - NOAA

I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said "Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time."

Five months on from Wilma, I’ve detected signs that some people are beginning to wonder what may be in store this year. The hurricane season starts in June, which somehow suddenly now seems just around the corner.

Right on cue, Sean Mattson poses some questions about hurricane preparedness in Cancún in an article for the San Antonio Express. He remarks on how insurers have announced higher premiums and are now more demanding of construction quality. You may recall that I wrote about it in January.

Hurricane Wilma was even stronger than originally estimated when it slammed into the Mexican Caribbean, the National Hurricane Center said in its final report (pdf) on the storm today.

Wilma was for a time the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, with top sustained winds near 185 mph and the lowest central pressure ever noted at 882 millibars (Oct. 19th), the report said. Forecasters had already confirmed that pressure, but the report increased the winds by 10 mph.

Wilma made its first landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on October 21st on the island of Cozumel with sustained winds of about 150 mph. At the time, Wilma was estimated to packed 140-mph winds.